In a major crackdown against cyber crime, the Nuh police arrested 42 cyber criminals from various parts of Nuh, Mewat in two days concerning several cyber fraud cases registered nationwide. The arrested accused include Deen Mohammad, Asif, Arif, Sarfaraz, Saqib, Ijaz, and Munajir among others.
During the operation, a total of 50 cellphones, fake Aadhar cards, over 90 SIM cards procured with forged documents, cash, and several ATM cards were seized from the possession of the arrested accused. This is the biggest crackdown on cyber criminals since April last year. Back then, the police had arrested 66 cyber criminals from 14 villages in an operation which included around 5,000 cops.
Taking to X, the Nuh Police also shared the details of the arrest and seizures in this special operation.
The special operation began on Saturday and continued till late Sunday evening.
According to officials, the arrests have been carried out with the help of the Pratibimb portal of the Union Home Ministry’s Integrated Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (i4C). The portal was launched this year. It plots the SIM and IMEI of the suspected fraudsters on a real-time basis, enabling law-enforcement agencies to identify and locate the suspects.
State police chief Shatrujeet Kapur said that Pratibimb gave the cops information about the location of 594 cyber frauds from across the state. Out of these individuals, 101 (18%) were located in the vicinity of Nuh and the neighbouring town of Alwar in Rajasthan. The real-time location data of the suspects along with their phone numbers were shared with the local police and the cyber crime coordination center located in Panchkula.
Kapur added, “Multiple SIM cards and forged Aadhaar cards were recovered from them. Their details will be matched with data stored with I4C to find out how many cases they were involved in.”
The accused used varied Modus operandi including bogus ads, sextortion, fake job offers
The spokesperson for Nuh police, Kishan Kumar said that the youths targeted people with a varied modus operandi, such as morphing images taken during video calls or putting up bogus ads.
He added, “Some of them were involved in sextortion, while others lured people to invest in sham schemes with the promise of lucrative returns. Some even reached out to their targets with fake ads on social media that offered to sell cows or work from home jobs.”
As per reports, the Police have filed over 18 cases against the arrested accused under IPC sections 419, 420, 467, 468, and 471.
SHO of the Cyber Crime police station, Inspector Vimal Rai stated that all police station managers/officers, CI units/staff, and separate teams of Nuh Cyber Police, including Cyber Cell Nuh, raided the locations of cyber criminals and apprehended them.
The Police have asserted that this campaign will continue in order to apprehend more criminals. Superintendent of Police, Nuh, Narendra Bijarnia, issued a stern warning to cyber criminals. He urged cyber criminals to cease cyber crime adding that if they fail to heed to the Police warning, “Nuh Police will deal with them rigorously”.
Over the years, Nuh had earned the notoriety as ‘new Jamtara’, a reference to the small Jharkhand town which became the epicentre of online frauds.
Last year in November, the Nuh Police’s Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) team busted a sextortion racket in Nuh and arrested 6 accused identified as Mastan, Ibram alias Imran, Moin son of Nasubat, Shamshuddin son of Jamil, Irfan son of Sheru, and Shahid son of Khurshid.
Further, Opindia had earlier reported that an Islamist mob broke inside the cyber police station in Nuh on July 31, 2023, using a hijacked bus during the Nuh violence. In a targeted attack, the violent mob ransacked and vandalised everything in sight with the ulterior motive of destroying crucial evidence. The Islamists also attempted to burn documents and set the police station on fire.
Later, on 5th August, the police informed that the attack on a cyber police station in the Nuh district of Haryana was pre-planned and aimed at destroying evidence of cyber fraud collected by the cops.
